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SilverStone Strider Essential 500W

Phoronix: SilverStone Strider Essential 500W

While we haven't looked at many power supplies lately at Phoronix since it's not exactly an area that has any relation to Linux hardware support, every once in a while we do review them when an interesting review unit comes along. Case in point, what we are reviewing today is the SilverStone Strider Essential 500W. The SilverStone SST-ST50F-ES is a 500 Watt power supply that offers a single 34 Amp +12V rail, a near-silent 120mm fan, ATX 12V 2.3 support, and is backed by Active PFC, but this power supply goes for an incredibly low price.

I really don't see the purpose of reviewing a power supply. At least not without actually doing some tests on it, like checking how it handles input surges or other forms out out-of-spec input conditions, as well as device shorts (is there protection between peripherals? Or can a capacitor explosion on a GPU send a surge that fries the mainboard?). What kind of beatings have you put on it? Have you tested its noise levels against load and ambient temperature? How well does it flow air out of the case?

What kind of capacitors are in it? Anything in it that could potentially explode/fail and take out other parts with it? (I've seen this happen...)

I have this PSU (bought it and the rest of my build on 30th March) and it sure is quiet. Practically all the noise my PC causes is the fault of my GPU.
No problems whatsoever. Sure was worth the €52.
________

The point of the review is a little lost on me too, but I bought the 350W model just the other day. Very quiet, however the heatsinks where disturbingly small, I would have prefered them to be a little meatier. I guess the lower end models don't need to be as well cooled, but with bigger heatsinks the fan could spin even less.

I have to say, mouse/keyboard, monitors and powersupply really shouldn't be reviewed unless they're particularly special...

The point of the review is a little lost on me too, but I bought the 350W model just the other day. Very quiet, however the heatsinks where disturbingly small, I would have prefered them to be a little meatier. I guess the lower end models don't need to be as well cooled, but with bigger heatsinks the fan could spin even less.

I have to say, mouse/keyboard, monitors and powersupply really shouldn't be reviewed unless they're particularly special...

oh man, I disagree heartily.

There are so many crap power supplies in use today because alot of places dont review them. I agree this article was a little light on data, but at least we got to see some idle vs load data, albeit without knowing how much load.

With a little more information this could have been a real nice review. But I dont mind anyone taking a try at reviewing power supplies. It still provided some good information, and maybe next time we'll get a review with more data.